http://englishkyoto-seas.org/ View the table of contents for this issue: http://englishkyoto-seas.org/2012/04/vol-1-no-1-online-at-the-end-of-april-2012/ Subscriptions: http://englishkyoto-seas.org/mailing-list/ For permissions, please send an e-mail to: [email protected] Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Vol. 1, No. 1 April 2012 CONTENTS Articles John Clifford HOLT Caring for the Dead Ritually in Cambodia ............................................( 3 ) Shu-Yuan YANG State Recognition or State Appropriation? Land Rights and Land Disputes among the Bugkalot/Ilongot of Northern Luzon, Philippines ........................................................( 77 ) Kurniawati Javanese Women and Islam: Identity Formation Hastuti Dewi since the Twentieth Century ............................................................(109) Research Report Attachai Decision Support System Research and Development Network JINTRAWET et al. for Agricultural and Natural Resource Management in Thailand: A TRF-DSS Experience ...............................................(141) Book Reviews Rommel A. CURAMING Edward Aspinall and Gerry van Klinken, eds. The State and Illegality in Indonesia. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2010, 328 p, with bibliography and index. .............................................................(163) Thanet Aphornsuvan Caroline S. Hau and Kasian Tejapira, eds. Traveling Nation-Makers: Transnational Flows and Movements in the Making of Modern Southeast Asia. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2011, 318 p. .........................................................................................(166) Nathan BADENOCH Paulin G. Djité. The Language Difference: Language and Development in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2011, 264 p. Andy Kirkpatrick. English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual Model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010, 236 p........................................(170) CHENN Jianming Kate Lazarus, Nathan Badenoch, Nga Dao and Bernadette P. Resurreccion, eds. Water Rights and Social Justice in the Mekong Region. London and Washington, D.C.: Earthscan, 2011, 285 p. ......................................................................(173) Andreas NEEFF Michael R. Dove, Percy E. Sajise and Amity A. Doolittle, eds. Beyond the Sacred Forest: Complicating Conservation in Southeast Asia. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011, 372 p. ................................................(179) Zhiqun ZHU Lye Liang Fook and Chen Gang, eds. Towards a Liveable and Sustainable Urban Environment: Eco-Cities in East Asia. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2010, 222 p. ......................(182) Erwin S. FERNANDEZ John Nery. Revolutionary Spirit: Jose Rizal in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011, 280 p. ........................................................................................(185) Caring for the Dead Ritually in Cambodia John Cliff ord Holt* Buddhist conceptions of the after-life, and prescribed rites in relation to the dead, were modified adaptations of brahmanical patterns of religious culture in ancient India. In this article, I demonstrate how Buddhist conceptions, rites and dispositions have been sustained and transformed in a contemporary annual ritual of rising importance in Cambodia, pchum ben. I analyze phcum ben to determine its funda- mental importance to the sustenance and coherence of the Khmer family and national identity. Pchum ben is a 15-day ritual celebrated toward the end of the three-month monastic rain retreat season each year. During these 15 days, Bud- dhist laity attend ritually to the dead, providing special care for their immediately departed kin and other more recently deceased ancestors. The basic aim of pchum ben involves making a successful transaction of karma transfer to one’s dead kin, in order to help assuage their experiences of suffering. The proximate catalyst for pchum ben’s current popularity is recent social and political history in Southeast Asia, especially the traumatic events that occurred nationally in Cambodia during the early 1970s through the 1980s when the country experienced a series of convul- sions. Transformations in religious culture often stand in reflexive relationship to social and political change. Keywords: Cambodia, buddhism, Khmer Rouge, death, ritual, pchum ben, family, national identity Death is an inevitable fact of life. For the religious, its occurrence does not necessarily signal life’s end, but rather the beginning of a rite de passage, a transitional experience in which the newly dead leave behind the familiarity of human life for yet another mode of being beyond. We may never know with certainty, but it is possible that thoughtful ruminations about the significance of death, and therefore about the meaning of life, accompanied by ritual practices designed to provide emotional solace in facing the loss that death entails, are seminal to the foundational origins of religious belief and practice. Within the comparative study of religious cultures, rites in relation to the dead are as ancient as they are ubiquitous. * Department of Religion, 7300 College Station, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 04079, U.S.A. e-mail: [email protected] Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2012, pp. 3–75 3 ©Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University 4 J. C. HOLT Buddhist interpretations of death, and rites in response to its occurrence, did not originate in an historical or cultural vacuum. Buddhist conceptions of the after-life, and prescribed rites in relation to the dead, were modified adaptations of prevailing brahmanical patterns of religious culture in ancient India. In this article, I shall demonstrate how Buddhist conceptions, rites and dispositions regarding the dead have been sustained and transformed in a contemporary annual ritual of rising popularity and importance in Cambodia, pchum ben. Moreover, I shall analyze the ritual in terms of its fundamental importance to the sustenance and coherence of the Khmer family and national identity. Remembering the Dead in Cambodia and Vietnam Pchum ben is a 15-day ritual celebrated in the Khmer month of Potrobot (in September or October depending on the timing of the lunar calendar), toward the end of the three- month sangha (monastic) rain retreat season (vassa). During these 15 days, Buddhist laity attend ritually to the dead, providing special care for their immediately departed kin and other more recently deceased ancestors. The basic aim of the collective rites com- prising pchum ben is making a successful transaction of merit-making and karma transfer to one’s dead kin, in order to help assuage their experiences of dukkha (suffering). Pchum ben is now celebrated as the most popular religious occasion of the Khmer Buddhist liturgical calendar year and, in addition to the April New Year celebrations, is one of the two most widely observed holidays throughout Cambodia today. The proximate catalyst for pchum ben’s current popularity is recent social and polit- ical history in Southeast Asia, especially the traumatic events that occurred nationally in Cambodia during the early 1970s through the 1980s when the country experienced a series of convulsions: first, the civil war precipitated by Cambodia’s proximity to an unsettled Vietnam, itself completely engulfed in the 2nd Indo-China War1); second, as an outcome of Cambodia’s concomitant civil war, the establishment of a radical revolu tionary government led by the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge from April, 1975, until early January, 1979; and finally, after the Khmer Rouge had baited the Vietnamese into a military con- flict along their eastern border, a foolish adventure that ultimately resulted in a country- wide Vietnamese military occupation, the autocratic rule of yet another communist- inspired government which then controlled an enervated Cambodian society and political economy for the ensuing decade. During the first 10 of these 20 years, from 1970 until 1980, close to one-third of Cambodia’s population, almost two million people (Chandler 1) Better known in the United States as the Vietnam War. Caring for the Dead Ritually in Cambodia 5 2008, 15), died from violence and neglect caused by political and military conflicts and economic experiments that turned into mad social misadventures: first from the massive number of American bombs that were dropped in the eastern regions of the country in the early 1970s (an aspect of the escalation of the 2nd Indo-China War that directly pre- cipitated Cambodia’s own civil war2)); second, from the intense military fighting that occurred between the U.S. supported and rightist Lon Nol (the Republic of Cambodia) who had staged a coup against the long time neutralist government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 on the one hand, and the China-backed Khmer Rouge revolutionary forces on the other, the latter of which eventually established Democratic Kampuchea in 1975; third, and especially, from the insidiously forced reorganization of society and the menacing maltreatment of its own citizens by the Khmer Rouge for the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days that they remained in power; and finally from the appalling rate of starvation that occurred during the earliest phases of the Vietnamese occupation in 1980 and thereafter. The vast majority of Cambodians who died during the intense American bombing campaign, the